R,   D.   V/ilson 


The  Present  State   of  tiie 
Daniel  Controversy 


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THE     PERSONALITY     OF     GOD  225 

James,  that  the  universe  "feels  like  a  real  fight,"  an 
with  Donald  Hankey  that  "True  religion  means  betti 
one's  life  that  there  is  a  God,"  and  then  make  tl^*^ 
venture  and  plunge  into  the  fight,  we  shall  be  able  rc'Ni 
declare,  with  Paul:     "I  know  whom  I  have  believed, 
and  am  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to  keep  that  which 
I  have  committed  unto  him  against  that  day." 

We  are  living,  we  are  dwelling, 

In  a  grand  and  awful  time, 
In   an  age  on   ages   telling, 

To  be  living  is   sublime. 
Worlds    are   charging,   heaven   beholding, 

Thou   hast   but   an   hour   to    fight; 
Now   the    blazoned    cross    unfolding, 

On,  right  onward,  for  the  right! 

Pittsburgh,   Pennsylvania. 


THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  THE  DANIEL 
CONTROVERSY 

By  Robert  Dick  Wilson,  Ph.  D.,  D.  D.,  Professor  of  Semitic  Philology 
and  Old  Testament  Criticism,  Princeton  Theological  Seminary 

Can  a  man  rationally  believe  in  the  book  of  Daniel? 
That  is,  can  he  beheve  that  the  people  mentioned  in 
it  existed  and  that  the  record  of  the  words  and  deeds 
said  to  have  been  spoken  or  done  by  or  to  them  is 
true?  This  article  is  an  attempt  to  answer  this  ques- 
tion in  the  affirmative. 

In  order  that  there  may  be  no  misunderstanding 
as  to  what  I  am  undertaking  to  do,  let  me  say  by  way 
of  clearly  defining  my  purpose  that  by  "rationally 
believe"  I  mean  to  believe  in  accordance  with  those 
laws  of  logic  and  evidence  on  the  ground  of  which 
we  accept  the  genuineness  and  veracity  of  the  state- 
ments of  any  alleged  historical  document,  that  is,  on 
the  ground  of  its  claims,  its  purpose,  language,  ideas, 
and  its  biographical,  chronological,  and  geographical 
statements. 

Before  entering  upon  the  discussion  of  our  subject, 
it  may  be  well  to  clear  the  ground  of  two  or  three 
possible  misapprehensions  as  to  the  scope  and  limits 
of  any  investigation  of  the  historical  character  of  a 
Biblical  document,  arising  from  the  fact  that  its  nar- 
ratives contain  records  of  miraculous  events.  It  seems 
to  be  taken  for  granted  by  many  critics  of  these 
documents  that  a  record  containing  accounts  of 
miracles  is  by  that  very  circumstance  rendered  in- 
credible and  open  to  suspicion  as  to  its  genuineness 
and  integrity.  However,  it  can  be  maintained  that, 
on  the  contrary,  an  ancient  document  purporting  to 

999 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  227 

be  historical,  which  did  not  narrate  events  that  were 
considered  by  the  narrator  and  his  readers  to  be  of  a 
miraculous  character,  would  by  this  very  omission 
lay  itself  open  to  doubt  as  to  its  genuineness.  For 
all  the  peoples  of  antiquity  thoroughly  believed  in 
miracles,  and  their  admittedly  genuine  works  are  full 
of  accounts  of  them.  The  Iliad,  Herodotus,  Livy, 
the  inscriptions  of  Egypt,  Babylon,  and  Assyria,  the 
Old  Testament  and  New  Testament  historical  and 
prophetical  books — all  are  full  of  omens  and  dreams 
and  of  the  intervention  of  the  gods  in  whom  the  people 
believed.  Not  merely  Ashurbanipal  and  Nabunaid 
and  Rameses  II  and  Xerxes,  but  Hezekiah  and  Alex- 
ander and  all  the  heroes  of  early  Greece  and  Rome 
and  the  worthies  of  Israel  believed  in  them  and  sought 
for  the  direct  help  of  the  gods  in  their  behalf. 

The  dreams  and  visions,  the  fiery  furnace  and  the 
lions'  den,  of  Daniel  are  in  harmony,  therefore,  with 
the  other  historical  records  of  all  ancient  nations  in 
this  respect;  and  if  we  reject  the  Daniel  document 
simply  because  it  contains  the  records  of  alleged 
miracles,  we  must  on  the  same  ground  reject  almost 
every  supposedly  historical  document  of  ancient  times. 
Wherein  the  alleged  miracle  consisted,  what  really 
happened  that  the  men  of  those  times  evidently 
supposed  to  be  a  miracle  and  that  was  designated 
by  that  name,  is  a  legitimate  subject  of  inquiry. 
Wherein  lay  the  extraordinary  character  of  the  event, 
its  origin,  its  denouement,  and  its  significance,  are 
proper  matters  of  investigation  for  the  theologian, 
the  philosopher,  and  the  psychologist;  but  the  philolo- 
gian  and  the  historian  have  to  do  merely  with  the 
genuineness  of  the  record  and  not  with  its  metaphysical 
grounds  and  its  scientific  explanations. 


228  THE     BIBLICAL     REVIEW 

And  what  is  true  of  miracles  in  general  is  true 
also  of  that  most  wonderful  and  unique  of  Old  Testa- 
ment miracles — predictive  prophecy.  One  who  denies 
on  philosophical  grounds  and  prepossessions  the  possi- 
bility and  actuality  of  all  superhuman  or  divine  inter- 
ventions in  the  affairs  of  men  may  be  predisposed  to 
doubt  the  genuineness  of  a  document  containing 
alleged  predictions  of  events  w^hich  afterwards  occur 
in  surprising  harmony  with  what  the  prophet  had 
foretold.  But  no  one  who  believes  that  God  may 
reveal  His  thoughts  to  man,  and  that  as  a  matter  of 
fact  He  has  at  sundry  times  and  in  diverse  manners 
made  His  thoughts  known  to  us  to  and  through  the 
prophets,  has  any  logical,  philosophical  or  scientific 
ground  for  contesting  the  age  or  integrity  of  a  book, 
simply  because  it  contains  predictive  prophecies 
which  have  later  been  fulfilled.  On  such  grounds  alone 
no  Mohammedan,  Jew  or  Christian  has  the  right  to 
entertain  suspicions  as  to  the  genuineness  and  authen- 
ticity of  the  Hebrew  prophetical  books.  On  such 
grounds  alone  no  Christian  especially  has  the  right 
to  doubt  a  book  from  whose  most  highly  contested 
portion  the  incarnate  Lord  Himself  quotes  w^ords 
which  He  unequivocally  attributes  to  Daniel  the 
prophet.  For  we  must  not  forget  that  the  funda- 
mental question  of  all  in  regard  to  a  revelation  from 
God  is  not  how  or  why,  or  what  kind  of  revelation 
has  been  made,  but  that  a  revelation  has  been  made 
at  all. 

When  one  has  admitted  that  a  communication  has 
been  made  by  God  to  man,  then  will  it  be  in  order 
to  consider  the  time,  the  manner,  the  form,  the  content, 
and  the  purpose  of  the  communication,  and  wherein 
it  agrees  with  and  differs  from  other  similar  communi- 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  229 

cations.  The  persons  to  whom  God  speaks,  the  extent 
and  detailed  character  of  His  disclosures,  the  language 
that  He  employs,  the  means  of  the  communication — 
the  dream,  the  vision,  the  ecstacy,  the  angel  of  Jehovah, 
the  still  small  voice  or  the  very  Son  of  God  Himself 
in  human  form — these  and  all  other  non-essential 
characteristics  are  all  subsidiary  to  the  main  fact,  that 
God  hath  spoken.  This  is  the  fundamental,  the 
essential,  the  supreme  factor  of  a  revelation.  That 
God  should  speak  at  all  was  His  own  prerogative, 
and  no  less  the  manner  in  which  He  spake. 

Now  just  here  lies  the  fallacy  of  all  those  who 
admit  that  God  has  revealed  His  will  to  man  and  j^et 
deny  the  genuineness  of  the  book  of  Daniel  on  the 
ground  of  the  character  of  the  predictive  prophecies 
contained  in  it.  If,  to  quote  a  recent  writer,  it  "con- 
tains a  definite  promise  of  deliverance  which  was  won- 
derfully fulfilled  {cf.  7:25;  8:25f.;  ll:45ff.),"  who 
is  to  set  a  limit  of  number  to  the  predictive  capacity, 
or  will  to  reveal,  of  God?  God,  or  the  critics  of  God, 
which?  For  is  it  not  evident  that  a  man  who  asserts 
that  "the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  kingdom  of  God  is 
here  made  known,"  but  that  God  could  not  have  fore- 
seen or  foretold  the  course  of  events  in  the  time  of 
the  Seleucid  kings  is  gagging  God,  reducing  Him 
to  the  limitations  of  humanity,  and  fixing  for  Him 
a  periphery  of  knowledge  and  a  radius  of  revelation 
beyond  which  He  cannot,  or  must  not,  pass? 

But,  says  the  critic,  I  am  doing  no  such  thing.  I 
am  simply  making  Daniel  follow  "the  analogy  of 
all  the  other  biblical  writings."  "The  conditions  and 
circumstances  of  a  prophet's  own  age  are  always 
reflected  in  his  messages;  and  the  promises  for  the 
future  and  predictions  of  judgment  always  rest   on 


230  THE    BIBLICAL    REVIEW 

the  historic  basis  of  the  period  to  which  he  belongs, 
having  a  practical  bearing  on  present  needs."  So 
asserts  the  modern  critic.  But  how  does  he  under- 
take to  substantiate  his  assertion  about  the  analogy 
of  the  other  prophets?  By  wilfully  throwing  out  from 
these  other  prophets  all  that  is  analogous  to  the  pre- 
dictive portions  of  Daniel,  and  then  affirming  that 
Daniel  is  not  analogous  to  the  portions  that  remain. 
Thus  they  throw  out  more  than  half  of  Isaiah  and 
large  sections  of  Jeremiah,  Amos,  Micah,  and 
Zechariah,  largely  because  the  ideas  and  predictions 
found  in  these  sections  will  not  harmonize  with  the 
theory  of  the  evolution  of  the  history  of  Israel — that 
golden  image  which  has  been  set  up  in  the  universi- 
ties of  Germany  before  which  all  men  are  commanded 
to  bow  down  and  worship.  For  there  is  no  certain 
evidence  external  to  the  Scriptures  in  favor  of  these 
changes  from  the  traditional  dates  and  authors.  Nor 
is  there  any  incontestable  evidence  in  the  books,  or 
sections  of  books,  that  will  justify  the  charges  that 
they  are  neither  genuine  nor  authentic.  INIuch,  it  is 
true,  has  been  claimed  on  the  ground  of  language,  and 
much  has  been  assumed  on  the  ground  of  the  ideas 
expressed;  but  mostly  the  arguments  for  interpolation 
and  pseudonomy  have  been  based  upon  analogy  and 
derived  from  the  very  definition,  or  proposition,  that 
they  are  meant  to  prove. 

Now,  the  force  of  the  analogical  argument  must 
be  admitted,  when  it  is  used  to  prove  the  possibility 
of  the  occurrence  of  a  like  event  or  of  the  existence 
of  a  similar  thing.  The  argimient  for  the  continued 
existence  of  the  soul  after  death  is  rendered  probable 
to  those  who  beheve  in  the  indestructibility  of  matter 
and  the  conservation  of  energy.     The  probability  of 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  231 

Old  Testament  miracles  seems  strong  to  those  who 
believe  in  the  Incarnation  and  the  Resurrection.  The 
possibility,  or  even  the  probability,  of  the  decrees  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  and  of  Darius  the  Mede  is  assured 
by  the  numerous  similar  decrees  of  other  tyrants. 

So,  also,  it  is  a  good  argument  from  analogy  to 
argue  from  the  character  of  one  or  more  of  the 
prophecies  in  favor  of  the  possibility,  or  even  the 
probability,  of  other  prophecies  of  a  like  nature.  But, 
so  far  only  can  analogy  take  us.  It  proves  at  most 
a  strong  probabihty.  For  the  indestructibility  of 
matter  and  the  conservation  of  energy  do  not  prove 
that  the  soul  will  exist  after  death.  The  occurrence 
of  some  miracles  does  not  prove  that  others  occurred. 
That  some  tyrants  have  made  cruel  decrees  does  not 
prove  that  others  did.  And  so  the  fact  that  some 
prophecies  are  of  a  certain  kind  does  not  prove  that 
all  must  have  been  of  that  kind.  It  proves  only  that 
other  prophecies   may  have   been   of   that   kind. 

It  is  a  pure  assumption,  therefore,  to  assert  that, 
because  certain  prophecies  reflect  "the  conditions  and 
circumstances  of  a  prophet's  own  age,"  all  other 
prophecies  must  reflect  them,  and  them  only.  This 
would  be  making  prophecy  nothing  but  a  human 
product.  The  Christian,  however,  must  ever  believe 
that  God  spake  through  the  prophets  "by  divers  por- 
tions and  in  divers  manners"  and  that  "no  prophecy 
ever  came  by  the  will  of  man;  but  men  spake  from 
God,  being  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  This  speak- 
ing from  God  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  the  fundamental  condition  of  a  true  prophet  of 
Jehovah,  which  the  conditions  and  circumstances  of 
the  prophet's  age  may  modify  in  form,  but  not  in 
essence.     That  is,  the   persons   and   events   of  which 


232  THE     BIBLICAL     REVIEW 

the  prophet  speaks  will  be  predominantly  those  of 
his  own  time,  or  of  times  preceding  his  own;  and  the 
language  will  give  indelible  marks  of  his  age,  his 
education,  and  his  environment;  the  descriptions  of 
manners  and  customs,  the  garments  worn,  the  weapons 
of  war  used,  the  heathen  gods  worshiped,  the  festivals 
kept,  the  administration  of  government  and  the  officers 
thereof,  the  chronology,  the  geography,  the  literary 
forms  in  dates,  titles,  contracts,  letters,  decrees,  and 
subscriptions — all  these  will  indicate  the  time  at  which 
the  author  wrote. 

But  with  the  fullest  use  of  all  these  and  of  all 
other  human  marks  and  indications  of  the  date  of  a 
document  we  must  stop.  To  attempt  to  determine 
the  genuineness  and  date  of  a  document  which  pur- 
ports to  contain  a  revelation  from  God,  by  fixing 
arbitrarily  a  time  limit  for  such  a  revelation,  is  a 
superhuman  endeavor  that  borders  on  blasphemy. 
This  sounds  like  strong  and  unwarranted  language, 
but  by  what  other  term  can  we  stigmatize  the  action 
of  those  who  claim  that  the  primary  reason  for  im- 
pugning the  genuineness  of  Isaiah  24-27  is  that  this 
section  contains  ideas  that  are  new  to  Isaiah?  The 
greatest  of  these  new  ideas  is  what  Isaiah  says  about 
the  Resurrection.  But  does  he  say  this  of  himself? 
No;  he  represents  God  as  saying  it.  It  was  not 
Isaiah's  idea  at  all.  It  was  God's.  The  modern 
critic,  however,  asserts  that  the  idea  of  a  resurrection 
is  of  purely  human  origin  and  that  the  Hebrews  never 
thought  of  such  a  thing  as  the  possibility  of  a  resur- 
rection till  the  post-captivity  times ;  and  that  even  then 
they  must  needs  derive  the  idea  from  the  Persians  1 

A  fig  for  such  so-called  scholarship!  Shame  on 
any  Christian  who  will  sell  his  birthright  of  divine 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  233 

revelation  for  such  a  mess  of  evolutionary  pottage  I 
Derived  from  the  Persians,  forsooth!  Why  not  from 
the  Egyptians,  who  for  thousands  of  years  had  lived 
with  and  for  this  great  idea?  Why  not  from  their 
own  hearts  as  they  agonized  over  the  stark  forms 
of  their  beloved  dead?  "If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live 
again?"  Was  Job  the  first  to  utter  such  thoughts 
as  this?  No,  no.  The  heart  of  every  parent  who 
has  loved  a  child  "long  since  and  lost  a  while"  must 
agree  with  me  that  the  first  homo  sapiens  that  ever 
sat  and  wept  "for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand  and 
the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still"  must  have  said  as  he 
looked  at  the  still  form  of  the  departed:  Shall  he 
live  again?  And  shall  we  see  him  as  he  was  wont 
to  be? 

When  we  apply  these  criteria  of  the  critics  to  the 
book  of  Daniel  we  find  it  fulfilling  them  as  well  as 
we  have  any  reasonable  right  to  expect;  for  the  con- 
ditions and  circumstances  reflected  in  it  are  those  at 
Babylon  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  the  age  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar and  Cyrus.  The  eight  dates  given  are 
all  from  the  accession's  year  of  the  former  to  the 
third  year  of  the  latter.  The  first  six  chapters  are 
certainly  meant  to  meet,  and  do  meet,  the  conditions 
and  circumstances  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  rather 
than  those  of  the  second.  In  the  last  six  chapters, 
however,  and  especially  in  the  eleventh  chapter,  there 
is  a  detailed  and  accurate  account  of  some  events  in 
the  history  of  the  Seleucids  and  Ptolemies,  and  an 
elaboration  of  certain  doctrines,  on  the  ground  of 
which  it  is  claimed  that  the  whole  book  (for  its  unity 
is  generally  admitted)  must  have  been  written  no 
earlier  thari  165  b.c.  As  these  accounts  of  events 
are  said  in  the  book  itself  to  have  been  made  known 


434  THE    BIBLICAL    REVIEW 

by  God  to  Daniel  in  visions  designed  to  reveal  the 
future,  we  leave  the  decision  as  to  the  weight  of  this 
objection  to  the  judgment  of  the  reader.  If  he 
believes  that  God  could  not,  or  would  not,  reveal 
such  an  account,  he  will  be  wasting  his  time  by  read- 
ing farther  in  this  article.  For  he  will  have  decided 
the  case  on  a  preconceived  opinion  and  not  on  the 
evidence.  And  in  deciding  this  case  on  the  ground 
of  this  opinion  let  him  know  that  he  has  rejected  also 
the  predictions  of  Christ  and  all  revelation  of  future 
events  as  well. 

But  if  he  believes  that  God  could  unveil  the 
future,  if  He  would,  let  him  proceed  with  me  to  a 
consideration  of  the  four  doctrines,  the  enunciation 
of  which  by  Daniel  is  said  to  imply  that  the  book 
cannot  have  been  composed  till  the  second  century, 
B.C.  These  doctrines  concern  angels,  the  resurrec- 
tion, the  judgment,  and  the  Messiah.  It  is  claimed 
that  Daniel  has  some  ideas  on  each  of  these  four 
subjects  that  are  new  to  Hebrew  literature  and  dif- 
ferent from  what  is  to  be  found  in  the  earher  prophets, 
that  these  new  ideas  were  derived  from  the  Persians, 
that  they  are  similar  to  the  ideas  of  apocalyptic  litera- 
ture, and  that  they  at  least  indicate  that  the  book 
was  not  written  till  late  in  the  Greek  period. 

Three  of  the  specifications  in  this  charge  may  be 
admitted,  to  wit,  that  some  of  Daniel's  ideas  are  new 
in  certain  characteristics,  that  the  statements  about 
them  differ  in  some  respects  from  those  in  earlier 
books,  and  that  they  are  similar  in  some  particulars 
to  those  found  in  the  apocalyptic  literature  of  later 
times;  but  the  two  important  specifications  bearing 
upon  the  date  of  Daniel,  that  is,  that  these  ideas 
were  derived  from  the  Persians,  and  that  they  indicate 


The     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  235 

a  second  century  origin  of  the  document,  are  abso- 
lutely incapable  of  proof.     For,  first,  the  author  of 
Daniel  claims  that  what  he  has  to  say  about  these 
ideas  was  made  known  to  him  in  the  visions  of  God; 
second,  there  is  no  indication  in  the  language  of  Daniel 
bearing  on  these  subjects,  or  in  any  Persian,  Baby- 
lonian, Greek,  Hebrew,  Aramaic,  Egyptian  or  other 
document,  that  any  such  influence  was  ever  exerted 
by  the  religion  of  Persia  upon  the  religious  ideas  of 
those  who  were  the  subjects  of  the  Achaemenid  kings; 
third,  the  only  Old  Persian  documents  that  have  come 
down  to  us  render  it  extremely  improbable  that  the 
religion  of  the  Avesta,  in  which  these  ideas  are  found, 
was  the  religion  of  the  Achaemenid  kings;  fourth,  no 
one  knows  when  the  Avesta  was  written,  and  it  is 
more  probable  that  its  author  derived  his  ideas  from 
the  Hebrews  than  vice  versa;  fifth,  even  if  these  ideas 
had  been  derived  by  the  Hebrews  from  the  religious 
teachings   of  the   Zoroastrians,   they   may   have   been 
derived    long   before   the   time   of    Cyrus,    since    the 
Israelites  had  been  settled  in  the  cities  of  the  Medes 
since  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century;  sixth,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  the  doctrines  of  a  resurrection  and 
of  a  judgment  may  have  been  taken  over  from  the 
Egyptians  and  those  of  angels  from  the  Babylonians, 
among  whom   the   Hebrews  lived   so  long  and  with 
whom    they    had    had    intimate    relations    from    the 
earliest  periods   of  their  history,  nor,  without  doing 
the  utmost  violence  to  what  purport  to  be  early  records 
of    the    Hebrews   themselves,    can    we    deny    that    a 
doctrine  of  a  Messiah  had  been  held  among  them  from 
the  earliest  times.    Besides,  even  if  it  could  be  shown 
that  the  idea  of  these  doctrines  had  been  suggested  to 
Daniel,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  the  religious  teach- 


236  THE     BIBLICAL    REVIEW 

ings  of  the  Persians,  his  treatment  of  them  is  so 
different  as  to  require  us  to  call  it  a  renovation,  a 
re-creation  or,  at  least,  an  adaptation  to  the  religion 
of  Jehovah. 

But  the  first  of  the  points  made  above,  to  wit, 
that  Daniel  received  his  ideas  on  these  subjects  by 
revelation  from  God,  will  satisfy  all  the  demands  of 
origin  and  time.  If  he  did  not  thus  receive  them, 
his  book  is  a  forgery,  and  the  ideas  contained  in  it 
are  of  purely  human  origin,  expressing  merely  fancies 
and  longings  about  subjects  concerning  which  God 
alone  can  know.  It  is  satisfying  to  know  that  all 
that  the  wisest  of  men  can  say  about  the  derivation 
of  these  ideas  is  pure  conjecture  without  any  scrap  of 
evidence  in  its  favor. 

But  some  of  those  who  might  admit  that  the  ideas 
of  Daniel  may  have  originated  among  the  Hebrews 
or  have  been  derived  from  the  Egyptians  or  Baby- 
lonians, or  even  from  the  Medo-Persians  before  550 
B.C.,  will  perhaps  claim  that  the  absence  of  the  influence 
of  these  ideas  upon  post-captivity  literature  proves 
that  Daniel  can  not  have  been  written  till  long  after 
the  captivity.  Such  a  claim  rests  upon  two  violent 
and  unwarranted  assumptions:  First,  that  a  large 
part  of  the  Old  Testament  which  purports,  or  at 
least  was  supposed  by  the  Jews,  to  have  been  written 
before  the  captivity  was  in  fact  composed  after  it; 
and,  second,  that  the  admittedly  post-captivity  litera- 
ture ought  naturally  to  show  deeper  and  more  dis- 
tinct traces  of  the  influence  of  Daniel's  ideas,  provided 
that  they  had  originated  and  been  promulgated  as 
early  as  the  sixth  century  B.C. 

In  answer  to  the  first  of  these  assumptions,  it  may 
be  said  that  it  will  be  time  to  discuss  the  traces  of 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  237 

ideas  concerning  angels,  the  resurrection,  the  judg- 
ment, and  the  Messiah,  in  the  so-called  priestly  portion 
of  the  Pentateuch,  in  the  Psalter,  etc.,  when  the  fact 
of  the  late  origin  of  the  latter  has  been  conceded.  As 
to  the  second  assumption,  it  is  to  be  said  that  it  can- 
not reasonably  be  expected  that  such  books  as 
Chronicles  should  show  the  influence  of  such  a  book 
as  Daniel,  even  if  it  were  admitted  that  the  latter  was 
composed  long  before  the  former,  inasmuch  as  the  book 
of  Chronicles  treats  only,  with  the  exception  of  the 
last  two  verses,  of  historical  matters  preceding  580  B.C. 
Nor  is  the  fact  that  the  history  and  doctrines  of 
Daniel  are  not  quoted,  or  referred  to,  in  post-captivity 
literature  before  200  B.C.  as  wonderful  as  some  would 
have  us  believe.  Chronicles  purports  only  to  give 
us  the  history  of  Israel  up  to  the  captivity.  Ezra 
and  Nehemiah  and  Esther  have  a  definite  purpose  in 
view  and  they  tell  us  only  of  events  and  persons 
connected  with  their  histories.  They  seldom  refer 
to  the  past  and  scarcely  mention  doctrines.  Haggai 
is  a  mere  fragment  treating  of  a  single  event,  and  no 
sensible  person  would  expect  to  search  in  it  for 
references  to  his  predecessors.  Zechariah  does  men- 
tion angels  and  the  Messiah,  and  in  many  particulars 
of  form  and  substance  closely  resembles  Daniel. 

In  the  failure  of  Ben  Sira  to  mention  Daniel  in 
his  list  of  the  heroes  of  Israel  a  more  serious  diffi- 
culty confronts  us,  but  not  one  that  is  insuperable. 
For  the  fact  that  he  does  not  put  in  this  list  the 
names  of  Mordecai  and  Ezra  shows  conclusively  that 
he  did  not  intend  it  to  be  inclusive  of  all  of  whom 
he  must  have  known,  nor  of  all  that  we  might  deem 
worthy  to  be  placed  in  it.  We  must  remember  that 
this  list  is  Ben  Sira's  and  not  ours.     He  gives  more 


238  THE     BIBLICAL     REVIEW 

space  to  the  description  of  the  garments  and  func- 
tions of  a  certain  high  priest  named  Simon  than  to 
the  words  and  acts  of  any  of  the  patriarchs,  kings  or 
prophets.  We  would,  doubtless,  have  done  differently. 
He  gives  seventeen  verses  to  Aaron  and  a  line  or 
two  to  all  the  Minor  Prophets  together.  He  praises 
Nehemiah  and  ignores  Ezra.  In  my  opinion — and  it 
is  only  an  opinion — he  most  probably  intentionally 
ignored  Daniel  because  of  the  doctrines  which  the 
latter  held.  Daniel  was  essentially  a  Pharisee, 
whereas  Ben  Sira  was  just  as  essentially  a  Sadducee. 
The  former  expresses  openly  his  belief  in  angels, 
resurrection,  a  judgment  after  death,  a  Messiah, 
and  a  universal  kingdom  with  Christ  as  king;  whereas 
the  latter  never  mentions  angels  except  in  citations, 
believes  only  in  an  immortality  of  fame,  and  does 
not  refer  to  a  judgment  or  a  Messiah.  Lastly,  when 
Ben  Sira  says  that  there  never  was  a  man  like  Joseph, 
he  adds  "in  this  respect,  that  his  bones  were  mustered." 
How  an  intelligent  critic  can  use  such  a  statement  as 
a  proof  that  Ben  Sira  knew  nothing  about  Daniel 
and  his  dreams  is  beyond  my  comprehension.  Perhaps 
he  never  read  Ben  Sira. 

It  is  asserted  further,  by  the  critics,  that  the  place 
of  Daniel  in  our  Hebrew  Bibles  is  a  proof  that  it 
was  written  late  and  after  the  canon  of  the  prophets 
had  been  closed.  Since  Zechariah,  Haggai,  and 
Malachi  are  in  this  prophetical  part  of  the  present 
canon  and  as  this  part  is  said  to  have  been  canonized 
before  200  B.C.,  Daniel  must,  so  it  is  affirmed,  have 
been  written  after  that  time.  This  is  a  very  specious 
argument.  The  principal  thing  against  it  is  that,  so 
far  especially  as  Daniel  is  concerned,  it  has  not  a 
single  scrap  of  direct  evidence  in  its  favor.     It  will 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  239 

be  admitted  that  all  of  the  prophets  were  canonized 
and  that  they  were  probably  translated  into  Greek 
before  200  B.C.,  but  this  does  not  prove  that  Daniel 
was  not  one  of  them.  It  is  admitted,  also,  that 
Daniel  does  not  appear  among  the  prophets  in  any 
of,  the  printed  Hebrew  Bibles,  nor  in  any  of  the 
Hebrew  sources  later  than  200  a.d.  On  the  contrary, 
the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  the  Ascension  of  Isaiah, 
Josephus,  and  Melito,  all  class  him  as  a  prophet,  and 
the  last  three  expressly  put  him  among  the  prophets, 
the  Ascension  and  Melito  by  name  and  Josephus  by 
description  and  numeration. 

Any  inference  as  to  the  date  of  a  book  to  be 
derived  from  its  place  in  our  printed  Hebrew  Bibles 
is  rendered  nugatory  by  the  fact  that  the  first  time 
that  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  ever  put  in 
their  present  order  was  in  the  edition  printed  in  1526. 
Of  forty-three  lists  of  these  books  that  I  have  pub- 
lished, and  to  which  I  can  now  add  several  others,  no 
two  give  the  same  order.  Of  thirty-four  lists  and 
classifications  made  before  600  a.d.,  from  both  Jewish 
and  Gentile  sources,  all  but  the  one  in  Baba  Bathra 
include  Daniel  among  the  prophets.  Of  these 
sources.  Second  Maccabees,  Philo,  Matthew,  Luke, 
Josephus,  the  Ascension  of  Isaiah,  Mehto,  and 
Jerome  are  all,  directly  or  indirectly,  of  Jewish 
origin,  and  the  authors  of  all,  with  the  possible  excep- 
tion of  Luke  and  Melito,  knew  Hebrew.  All  the 
Greek,  Latin,  Syriac,  Armenian,  Ethiopic,  and 
Coptic  (?)  sources  (the  authors  of  some  of  which 
knew    Hebrew)    place    Daniel    among    the    prophets. 

As  to  Baba  Bathraj  the  only  dissentient  from  the 
general  agreement,  it  was  written  some  time  after 
the  Jews  had  made  their  selection  of  sections,  called 


240  .  THE     BIBLICAL     REVIEW 

Haplitaroth,  to  be  read  in  their  synagogue  services; 
and  as  no  part  of  Daniel  had  been  selected  for  this 
purpose,  the  whole  book  was  probably  removed  from 
its  proper  and  earlier  place  among  the  other  prophetical 
books  and  placed  among  the  books  for  more  private 
reading.  The  books  containing  the  selections  for 
public  reading  would  thus  be  put  together,  simply 
for  greater  convenience  in  use,  just  as  Ruth  and 
Lamentations  were  separated  from  among  the  prophets, 
where  they  originally  belonged,  and  arranged, 
along  with  Ecclesiastes,  the  Song  of  Songs,  and 
Esther,  in  the  portion  called  Megilloth,  because  these 
five  books  were  read  at  the  five  great  festivals  of  the 
Jews.  We  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  position 
assigned  to  the  book  of  Daniel  in  a  list  composed 
about  four  hundred  years  after  the  time  of  the  Macca- 
bees and  nearly  seven  hundred  and  fifty  years  after 
the  death  of  Cyrus  affords  no  evidence  as  to  the  date 
of  its  composition  and  the  genuineness  of  its  contents. 
As  to  the  attack  upon  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
historical  statements  contained  in  Daniel,  it  may  be 
said  that  they  have  all  been  satisfactorily  met,  except 
that  which  concerns  the  identification  of  Darius  the 
Mede.  As  to  this,  the  most  likely  suppositions  are 
that  he  was  the  same  as  Gobryas,  whom  Cj^rus 
appointed  governor  of  Babylon  just  after  the  time  of 
its  conquest  by  the  Medo-Persian  army ;  or  that  Darius 
was  a  sub-king  under  Cyrus,  the  king  of  kings,  having 
Gobryas  under  him  as  governor  of  the  province  of 
Babylon.  Either  of  these  views  will  harmonize  with 
the  Persian  system  of  government  and  with  all  the 
statements  of  the  book  of  Daniel.  For  we  know  that 
nearly  all  of  the  kings  of  Persia  had  two  names,  one 
a  regnal  name  received  at  the  time  of  their  assumption 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  241 

of  the  sovereignty,  and  the  other  their  pre-regnal 
cognomen.  That  no  tablets  have  been  found  with  the 
name  of  Darius  in  their  dates  is  not  extraordinary, 
since  the  same  is  true  of  all  the  other  sub-kings  and 
governors  of  the  empire  during,  or  after,  the  reign  of 
Cyrus.  That  Darius  may  have  appointed  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  satraps  under  himself  is  assured  by 
the  fact  that  Gobryas  is  said  to  have  appointed  satraps 
under  him  in  the  city  of  Babylon,  and  by  the  meaning 
of  the  word,  which  denotes  no  more  than  "protector 
of  the  kingdom."  That  Cyrus  and  Darius  Hystaspis 
are  said  by  Greek  historians  to  have  appointed  fewer 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  case,  for  a  satrap  might 
have  satraps  under  him,  just  as  a  king  had  kings 
under  him. 

That  Darius  the  Mede  may  have  been  a  reflection 
of  Darius  Hystaspis,  or  of  other  kings,  is  controverted 
by  the  fact  that  no  resemblance  between  them  can  be 
shown  either  in  character  or  works.  That  he  was  a 
confusion  of  several  of  the  kings  of  Persia  is  a  wild 
and  utterly  unjustified  assertion,  amounting  to  little 
more  than  saying  that  he  was  a  man  and  a  king  and 
that  consequently  he  had  both  the  virtues  and  the 
weaknesses  common  to  all  men  who  are  also  kings. 
That  Daniel  has  confused  his  Darius  the  Mede,  the 
son  of  Xerxes  (/.  e.,  Ahasuerus),  with  Darius 
Hystaspis,  the  father  of  Xerxes  of  Thermopylae  and 
Salamis,  has  not  a  shred  of  evidence  in  its  favor; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  shows  a  clear  discrimination  of 
the  author  as  between  the  two  Dariuses.  To  speak 
of  John  Smith,  the  son  of  Peter,  does  not  show  that 
one  does  not  know  of  Peter  Smith,  the  son  of  John; 
much  less  that  one  does  not  know  of  the  latter.  It 
proves  rather  the  opposite.     For  if  there  were  only 


242  THE     BIBLICAL     REVIEW 

one  John  Smith,  or  one  Peter  Smith,  it  would  be 
perfectly  obvious  which  of  them  was  meant.  So,  if 
there  had  been  but  one  Darius,  or  one  Xerxes;  but 
with  half  a  dozen  of  the  former  and  three  or  more  of 
the  latter,  the  author  has  thought  it  best  to  state 
clearly  which  of  the  Dariuses  he  meant/ 

That  there  was  no  Median  empire,  embracing 
Babylon  within  its  bounds,  between  the  reign  of 
Nabunaid  and  that  of  Cyrus  does  not  militate  against 
the  book  of  Daniel;  for  its  author  never  says  that 
there  was  a  Median  empire  at  all.  He  never  says 
that  Darius  the  Mede  was  either  king  of  Media  or 
of  Persia,  but  simply  that  he  received  the  kingdom 
of  Belshazzar,  the  Chaldean  king  of  Babylon. 

All  of  the  essential  points  which  have  been  dis- 
puted concerning  the  kingship  of  Belshazzar  have 
been  satisfactorily  explained.  The  last  allegation — 
that  he  cannot  have  been  king  because  he  is  not 
called  king  on  the  tablets — has  been  dispelled  since 
Mr.  Pinches  published  the  tablet  showing  that  oaths 
were  taken  in  his  name.  On  the  tablets  from  the 
earliest  to  the  latest  times  we  have  oaths  recorded  and 
they  all,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  in  the  name  of 
the  sacred  city  of  Sippar,  are  in  the  name  of  a  god, 
or  a  king,  or  of  both  together.  The  objections  made 
to  Daniel's  statements  about  the  expedition  of 
Nebuchadnezzar,  and  the  critics'  alleged  evidence  in 
support  of  these  objections  derived  from  chronology 
and  geography,  may  be  shown  to  have  been  founded 
on  the  ignorance  of  commentators  or  upon  the  mere 
silence  of  docimients.  That  he  may  have  been  mad 
for    seven    "times"    is   manifest    from    the    fact    that 


*For  a  full  discussion  of  the  objections  to  the  historical  statements 
of  Daniel  and  for  the  evidence  bearing  upon  these  objections  the  reader 
is  referred  to  the  writer's  book  entitled  Studies  in  the  Book   of  Daniel. 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  243 

there  are  two  or  three  periods  of  his  reign,  covering 
about  seven  years  each,  from  which  no  documents 
of  his  have  come  down  to  us;  and  especially  from  the 
fact  that  'iddan,  the  word  for  time  in  the  Aramaic 
of  Daniel  and  a  word  used  nowhere  else  in  the  Old 
Testament,  is  indisputably  a  common  Babylonian 
term  to  express  an  appointed,  or  fixed,  time,  being 
employed  scores  of  times  in  the  astronomical  tablets 
and  elsewhere  in  this  sense.  That  the  terms  for  king, 
wise  man,  and  Chaldean  are  used  by  the  author  in 
a  sense  proper  to  the  second  century  B.C.,  but  impos- 
sible in  the  sixth,  has  been  shown  by  a  more  complete 
induction  of  the  facts  not  to  be  the  case.  In  a  tablet 
of  the  Yale  collection,  lately  published  by  Professor 
Clay,  the  Babylonian  word  for  Chaldean  will  be 
found  in  the  midst  of  a  list  of  seers  and  priests,  thus 
confounding  finally  the  unfounded  and  strenuously 
asserted  assumption  of  the  "scholars"  who  have  exulted 
in  this  so-called  evidence  of  the  lack  of  genuineness 
on  the  part  of  Daniel! 

As  regards  the  claim,  put  forward  by  the  late  Dr. 
Driver  and  reaffirmed  with  a  great  array  of  alleged 
but  absolutely  irrelevant  evidence  by  Professor  Gray 
of  Mansfield  College,  Oxford,  that  it  was  "unnatural 
and  unnecessary,"  as  well  as  "contrary  to  contem- 
porary usage,"  for  a  writer  of  the  Persian  period  to 
have  employed  the  title  "king  of  Persia,"  the  readers 
of  this  article  are  left  to  their  own  judgment  based 
upon  the  facts  below,  which  no  amount  of  quibbling 
or  shifting  of  the  issue  or  indulgence  in  personalities 
can  possibly  annul. 

The  facts  and  the  evidence  as  to  the  use  of  the 
title  in  Persian  times  are  as  follows :  There  are  thirty- 
three  instances  of  its  occurrence  in  extra  Biblical  docu- 


244  THEBIBLICALREVIEW 

ments  between  535  and  400  B.C.  It  is  found  in  the 
Persian,  Susian,  Babylonian,  Greek,  Hebrew,  and 
Aramaic  languages,  and  is  said  by  Herodotus  to 
have  been  used  by  the  Ethiopians.  It  was  used  in 
localities  as  widely  separated  as  Babylon,  Ecbatana, 
Athens,  and  perhaps  Siene.  It  was  used  by  nineteen 
different  authors  in  twenty  different  documents. 
Nabunaid,  king  of  Babylon,  employs  it  of  Cyrus; 
Darius  Hystaspis,  of  himself;  the  Babylonian  sub- 
jects of  Xerxes,  once  at  least  alone,  of  him.  Aeschylus, 
who  fought  at  Salamis,  Xenophon,  who  led  the  retreat 
of  the  Ten  Thousand,  Herodotus,  who  had  traveled 
throughout  the  bounds  of  the  Persian  Empire,  who  had 
been  born  at  Halicanarsus  in  Asia  Minor  while  it  was 
subject  to  Persia,  and  whose  history  was  read  before 
the  assembled  multitude  of  knowing  and  critical 
Greeks  at  Olympia,  all  call  the  kings  of  Persia  by 
this  title.  Are  we,  then,  to  asperse  the  genuineness 
of  the  Daniel  document,  because  an  eminent  German 
professor,  who  lived  before  the  age  of  Assyriology, 
and  an  Oxford  professor  and  his  followers  unite  in 
affirming  that  it  was  "contrary  to  contemporary 
usage"  to  employ  it?  In  this  age  of  democracy  we 
might  agree  that  it  seems  "unnatural  and  unneces- 
sary," but  we  are  compelled  to  admit  that  his  Roj^al 
and  Imperial  Majesty,  the  war  lord  of  Prussia  and 
Germany,  and  his  superman  subjects,  might  object. 
The  space  allotted  me  for  this  article  forbids  that 
I  should  more  than  state  succinctly  the  results  of 
investigations  as  to  the  linguistic  characteristics  of 
the  book  and  their  bearing  upon  the  date  of  Daniel. 
Let  it  suffice  to  say  that  the  virulent  assaults  upon 
the  genuineness  of  the  book  along  the  line  of  language 
have    failed    of   their    purpose.      The    proper    names. 


THE     DANIEL     CONTROVERSY  245 

being  as  they  are,  Siimerian,  Babylonian,  Persian, 
Aramaic,  and  Hebrew,  suit  the  time  of  Cyrus  and 
the  provenance  of  Babylon.  So,  also,  do  the  common 
names  of  foreign  origin;  for  every  unprejudiced 
scholar  will  admit  that  by  the  time  of  Cyrus  Medo- 
Persian  words  (for  the  Medes  spoke  substantially  the 
same  language  as  the  Persians),  especially  govern- 
mental terms,  may  easily  have  injected  themselves 
into  the  language  of  the  Hebrews,  of  whom  many 
had  been  settled  in  the  cities  of  the  Medes  for  about 
two  hundred  years.  Moreover,  it  is  a  question  that 
I  would  like  to  have  the  critics  answer,  why  there 
are  none  of  the  so-called  Persian  words  of  Daniel  in 
either  Ben  Sira  or  the  Zadokite  Fragments;  and  why 
we  meet  with  not  one  of  them  anywhere  in  the 
Bible,  except  in  Ezra-Nehemiah,  Chronicles,  and 
Esther.  If  Daniel  were  written  in  June,  164  B.C., 
right  in  the  midst  of  the  Maccabean  struggle  for 
freedom,  and  his  work  could  be  accepted  as  patriotic 
and  proper,  notwithstanding  the  large  number  of  its 
foreign  vocables,  why  is  it  that  Jonah  and  Joel  and 
the  numerous  parts  of  Isaiah,  Micah,  Nahum,  Jere- 
miah, and  Proverbs,  and  the  half  of  the  Pentateuch 
called  P,  and  the  one  hundred  and  forty-nine  Psalms, 
more  or  less,  that  are  assigned  by  these  literary 
critics  to  the  period  of  the  Persians  and  of  their 
Greek  successors — why  is  it,  I  say,  that  the  authors  of 
all  of  these  anonymous  interpolations  and  pseudepi- 
graphs  have  eschewed  utterly  all  of  these  so-called 
Persian  words,  which  the  author  of  Daniel  thought  it 
proper  to  use  in  a  popular  work  designed  to  restore 
the  decadent  faith  and  courage  of  a  disheartened  nation  ? 
As  to  the  Greek  words  in  Daniel,  the  inscriptions 
of  Sargon  and  Sennacherib  show  us  that  a  hundred 


246  THE     BIBLICAL     REVIEW 

years  before  the  birth  of  Daniel  the  Greeks  of  Cyprus 
and  Cilicia  had  been  subject  to  the  Assyrian  power; 
and  the  inscriptions  at  Abu  Simbal  in  Egypt  and 
the  Greek  historians  show  that  Greeks  had  been  serv- 
ing as  soldiers  in  the  armies  of  Egypt  and  Babylon 
long  before  Daniel  wrote  his  book.  Thousands  of 
Greeks  must  have  been  taken  prisoners  by  the  kings 
of  Assyria  and  Babylon  and  have  been  sold  into 
Babylonia.  Thousands  must  have  been  bought  from 
slavery  in  Syria  and  Mesopotamia  and  Assyria  and 
the  Lydians  and  Phenicians.  These  pitiful  exiles  from 
the  land  of  music,  poetry,  and  song  may  have  hung 
their  Ijtcs  and  their  psalteries  on  the  same  willow  on 
which  the  Hebrew  poet  hung  his  harp  and  may  have 
wept  as  they  remembered  Athens. 

Finally,  has  it  never  struck  the  critics   as  some- 
what singular  that,  if  Daniel  were  composed  in  Mac- 
cabean  times,  he  should  have  so  many  resemblances 
to  Ezekiel,   Ezra-Xehemiah,   Chronicles,   and  Esther, 
both  in  grammar  and  vocabulary,  and  so  few  to  all 
that  numerous  list  of  pseudepigraphic,  pseudonymous, 
and   anonymous   writings   which   they   have   violently 
wrested  from  their  supposed  authors,  ages,  and  back- 
ground and  dumped  into  the  period  of  the  Seleucids? 
Why  has  no  one  of  the  literary  critics  attempted  t' 
show   the    resemblance    of   Daniel    to    Ecclesiasticus 
If    the   manner    and    method    of    comparison    of   tl. 
critics  were  as  infallible  as  they  claim,  these  two  grea 
works  should  be  much  alike  in  ideas,  vocabulary,  an( 
grammar.     But  they,   unfortunately   for  the  mannei 
and  the  method,  are  not  merely  not  alike,  but  much 
unlike.     Hinc  lachrymae  illae!     Hence  that  gloomy 
sadness    that   now   beclouds    the   critic's    brow    as    he 
gazes  on  the  dissolving  shadows  of  his  exploded  theories 

Pbikcetox,   New  Jemet. 


PAMPHLET  BINDER 

^^^    Syrocuse,  N.   Y. 
Stockton,  Calif. 


Date  Due 

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BSi 555.8  .W75 

The  present  state  of  the  Daniel 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 

III  |!l  'Ml!  "I  I!  I  'I'l  |'!!|| 


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